Chapter 136: Purpose
Dasha's stomach cramped again, violent and sudden. He thought of how ravenously he had eaten just moments ago.
He doubled over and started retching again.
But there was nothing left in his stomach. Only dry heaves, acid climbing his throat, scorching him on the way up.
His mother stood watching. The tears had long since run dry.
She reached out, wanting to touch his back — to give him something, anything. But her hand hung in the air and wouldn't come down.
She didn't know what to say. She was afraid of making it worse.
Germann cut a piece of meat from the rack. He picked it up on the end of the iron skewer and walked over to Dasha.
"Stop wasting it." He held the meat out to Dasha's lips. "Keep eating."
Dasha turned his head away. His mouth stayed shut.
"Not eating?" Germann's eyebrow went up, warm as a man welcoming an old friend. "That won't do. I put real effort into sourcing those ingredients. Refusing to eat is just ungrateful."
He pushed the meat forward until it nearly touched Dasha's lips.
Dasha clenched his jaw. He would not open his mouth. Not for anything.
The smile on Germann's face contracted slightly.
He turned and walked toward Dasha's mother.
He drew the sword at his hip and laid the flat of the blade against her throat.
The cold metal pressed against her skin. Her tiger-slit pupils narrowed. Her body locked up on instinct.
But she didn't beg. She only closed her eyes.
"Eat." Germann's voice came from behind Dasha, precise as a blade finding the gap between ribs. "Or she goes in the next pot."
Dasha spun around.
His mother was kneeling on the ground. The sword was resting against her throat.
Her eyes were closed. Her lashes trembled faintly. Her lips were moving — soundlessly, barely a whisper.
Dasha read the words from her lips.
Don't eat.
But Dasha turned away.
He took the piece of meat from Germann's hand and put it in his mouth.
The meat dissolved on his tongue — that same rich, deep flavor he knew too well.
He bit down. Couldn't hold it. Brought it back up.
Meat and stomach acid surged up his throat and hit the ground.
He wiped his mouth. Bit down again. Brought it up again.
His mother knelt on the ground, watching him suffer.
Her fingers clawed into the dirt. Her nails split. Blood seeped from her fingertips.
She lunged forward suddenly — trying to throw herself into the blade and let it cut across her throat.
Germann's hand was faster. The blade pulled back in the instant before it would have broken skin.
"Want to die?" His voice came from above her, carrying open contempt. "Can't have that. I'm a compassionate man. Death offends my sensibilities."
Her body crumpled to the ground. She couldn't even cry anymore. She just lay there, eyes open, watching Dasha.
Dasha kept eating. Kept retching.
His body was shaking. Every swallow felt like another piece of himself breaking off.
Finally the meat was gone.
Germann gave a satisfied nod.
He stood and turned to face every beastman in the pen, his voice landing with a weight that made the air feel thin.
"Remember that taste. That's the human flesh you love so much."
His gaze moved across the faces still heaving, still weeping, still shaking.
"Remember your rage. The humans you ate — their rage was fiercer than this. Sit with that."
He paused. The corner of his mouth pulled into a cruel arc.
"Anyone who still wants human flesh after today — come find me. I'll make sure you get your fill."
The beastmen looked at the bodies of their own on the rack. Then down at their hands, still slick with fat and broth.
It landed then. What they had never stopped to think about before.
Those humans they had penned. Fed slop. Treated like livestock with no more consideration than the sheep.
When they were eaten — they had felt this. This exact thing. Rage and despair and no way out.
Germann said nothing more. He turned and walked out of the pen.
Behind him, only silence remained.
And the smell of meat that refused to leave the air.
In a concealed corner at the village's edge, far from the pen.
More than a dozen bodies lay scattered across the ground. Blood had poured from the wounds and soaked into the dry earth.
Lucian stood among them. His sword was still dripping.
The blood ran down the blade and fell from the tip, each drop striking the ground with a small, quiet sound.
His breathing was steady. He had been killing beastmen for years — a scene like this hadn't disturbed him in a long time.
He closed his eyes and took careful stock of himself.
Nothing had changed.
The warrior's strength inside him showed no sign of growth. The hidden class's level hadn't moved.
Still nothing.
Lucian opened his eyes. A slight frown.
Selecting the beastmen with negative justice values for separate elimination was an attempt to raise the level of a hidden high-tier special class from YGGDRASIL.
In the game, hidden high-tier special classes required exceptionally demanding prerequisites before they could be unlocked.
Ainz's [Eclipse], for example.
The racial level track had to include "Overlord" at Lv.5 or higher.
Skill points needed to be heavily invested in death-focused magic classes like Necromancer, brought up to a certain level.
Becoming the [Eclipse] therefore required committing hard to the necromancer specialization route.
And the character's total level had to reach Lv.95 before the class would even unlock.
But people who transmigrated to another world didn't seem to be bound by prerequisites as strictly. Lucian's working theory was that if a person's actual experiences satisfied even one of several qualifying conditions, there was a reasonable chance the class would unlock anyway.
The hidden class he had unlocked was one with a specific advantage against beings of negative justice value.
[Corruption Purifier]
He remembered the unlock conditions from the game: Paladin maxed, Evil Slayer maxed. Total level at Lv.95. A substantial kill count against evil beings of negative justice value.
He had managed to unlock it. That much had worked.
The problem was the leveling. Unlocking was one thing — getting the class from its current level to the cap of Lv.5 was turning out to be the real obstacle.
All he could do was keep killing beastmen with negative justice values and hope the class would eventually advance.
Even now, he wasn't certain why it had unlocked in the first place. Was it because he had killed enough negative-justice beings? Or was there something else he was missing?
He turned the game lore over in his mind.
Slaughtering freely for the sake of power — is that truly justice? Is this killing to protect something, or killing for the sake of killing?
Lucian shook the blood from his blade.
Or —
He asked himself quietly.
Is the reason I unlocked it because I intend to use these... unjust means against the evil that Ainz represents?
He had no answer.